Fans of “The Expendables” hoping for a their outing are no doubt looking to this week’s box office to see how well “The Expendables 2″ holds up after opening a disappointing #1 (but still #1) last week. The film is saddled with a much bigger budget than the first movie (perhaps due to the bigger roles for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who only had glorified cameos in the first movie?), so it has a longer way to go to surpass the first one, which eventually topped off at $274 million worldwide. Not bad for an $80 million dollar budgeted actionfest.

Well good news, fans of stuff blowing up real good — “The Expendables 2″ maintained its hold at the box office in its second week, once again claiming top dog position with another $13.5 million, good enough for $52 million Stateside and $74 million worldwide in two weeks of release. That’s the good news. The bad news? $13.5 million was enough to take first place at the box office. Yikes. Like “The Expendables 2″, “The Bourne Legacy”, “ParaNorman”, and “The Campaign” held onto their respective #2, #3, and #4 spots from last week, while “The Dark Knight Rises” gained, climbing back up to the Top 5 after falling out last week.

Among the newcomers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s bike flick “Premium Rush” opened with a solid thud in 7th place with $6.3 million. But at least it performed better than the Dax Shepherd movie “Hit and Run”, which opened in the 10th spot with $4.6 million despite having more than 600 additional screens compared to “Rush”. As expected, Warner Bros.’ “let’s just sneak it into theaters” horror outing “The Apparition” didn’t even crack the Top 10, landing in 12th place with $2.9 million on 810 screens. If you saw any press for this thing, you were really paying attention. Or watching MTV.

So what’s the deal with the weak box office? I’m not an expert and I have no scientific proof, but the fact that kids are heading back to school might be one of the main reasons. Parents and kids aren’t exactly thinking about weekends at the movies these days, they’re trying to get everything ready for the first day of class on Monday. Of course, I could be wrong.